Free games of the week - August 25th 2018

This week, we have another bundle of wonderful games that can all be yours for free, and this week we're getting colourful! You can take a journey into the world of a beautiful bird, looking for their brother and fighting magical forces, or you read a story of wonder and self discovery through abandoned worlds. If Twine isn’t your thing, we have a platformer about gathering tomatoes for pizza sauce, a dungeon crawler full of explosions of colour, and a sweet Bitsy game about finding the best colour. These games are all waiting for you.

Looking for more free games? Check out our round up of the best free PC games that you can download and play right now.

Shattered by Yasaman Farazan, Jasmin Habezai-Fekri, Svenja Rösner, & M. Sadegh H. Broomand

Taking you on a journey into the colourful, magical world of a tiny pastel bird looking for its brother, Shattered is a stunning platformer filled with character and story. You wake up late one morning and find your brother already out and about, though he's left a mysterious note saying he's gone to the top of the mountain and wants you to join him. It’s time to head outside your cage and start this adventure.

The world around you, though beautiful, seems to be off. There are black shards roaming around, taking control of the thoughts and feelings of the birds you’ve grown up around. You, unlike most of the birds, have a bell that you can use to release music notes. These in turn allow you to change the world around you and defeat those nefarious shards. As you try to find your brother, you're also able to talk to other birds and see what they think of all of this madness. Hopefully you can stop the shards from taking over - and find out what really happened to your bro.

Kindness by Athena Sylvain

Kindness is a Twine-based text adventure that takes you through a long forgotten world; dried rivers, old broken buildings, and deserted temples all await you. You start off by declaring why you came to this forgotten civilisation in the first place, and then start your adventure in the abandoned city, walking through the ghosts of the community. You can explore further - but some places are closed off until you have the right item to unlock them.

Kindness does a very good job of asking you questions about yourself, and provides a variety of answers to cover how you may feel. At first the questions are pretty simple, like how you feel about hugs or holding a sword. Soon it moves on to things like questioning your feelings about cruelty, and provides a wider range of answers. This game develops a strange feeling in you - filling haunted places with emotion, and making you truly think about how specific items or actions makes you feel. You learn a lot about yourself, all while exploring and looking for something you truly seek.

Smithy of the Fishy by lazyeye, Failpositive, & BenStar

You can explore a vastly more cheerful world in Smithy of the Fishy, a randomly generated dungeon crawler where your goal is to gather as much treasure as you can before time runs out. Did I mention you have to do this without a weapon, too? There's an array of hazards in the dungeon you want to loot: floor spikes, lava, other fish blocking your path... pretty standard stuff, eh? Luckily, you can gather gems around you, and if you run into any dangers you'll drop a plethora of them in an explosion of colour!

You do need to keep collecting treasure as fast as you can, though, opening up chests and finding keys to the locked gold ones. Meanwhile, a sun moves across the screen showing you how much time is left. At the midway point, a massive enemy will be added to the dungeon, actively looking to claim back its loot. If you do stay in the dungeon until time runs out, a giant hook will carry you out with only half your ill gotten gains with you. If you make it back to the door, however, then you can keep it all!

Tomato Sauce by Patsui

This platformer has you playing the famous Chef Tomsay who has run out of tomato sauce. Luckily, and for whatever reason, your backyard is huge and full of tons of tomatoes - tomatoes that are perfectly ripe for your homemade sauce! A food critic is coming, so Chef Tomsay needs an ungodly number of tomatoes to create the best sauce possible.

Collecting tomatoes isn’t as straightforward as you’d expect. It involves jumping on platforms, avoiding bugs, and generally staying alive while gathering as many as possible. There are checkpoints occasionally, as well as tricky jumps to make. You do have your own pizza paddle (don’t think about how unhygienic this is) which you can use to whack away any undesirable characters that cross your path. Hopefully you can collect enough tomatoes to get this sauce made!

i wanna be with you by Pi_Ninja

I wanna be with you is an adorable, yet short, Bitsy game where you play as a small, colourful character in a grey desert. You, one day, meet another small character outside your home. They seem to be on their own, enjoying the desert. You were all on your own until you met them. Now, you can both be alone together.

You're able to talk, and learn more about the desert than you originally knew. Though it is short, and you are unable to pick answers to what your new companion asks, the game itself is wonderful. Playing it, you feel that warmth in your heart - that subtle, sweet, warm feeling of love that we all need from time to time. You're then able to explore the desert after being told how much it means to this individual - one who seems to really care for you.

You are the nicest colour they have ever seen in a world full of grey.

Disclosure: Jupiter Hadley is an apprentice games wizard at Armor Games, helping them to find released free games to sign.